Mr. Gladstone delivered a speech to a select meeting of
Non- conformists at the house of Dr. Parker on Wednesday, which we have read with dismay and a genuine sinking of the heart, —not for its hearty support of Irish. Home-rule, not for its whitewashing of the Pantellite Party ever since -1881, but for the leniency, and even qualified approval, with whioh Mr. Glad- stone treats the boycotting of the present day, and the attenuating interpretation which he now gives to all the strong and manly censure with which he denounced the abettors of the Land League in 1881. Boycotting and exclusive dealing "may," he says, "be very bad things, but they are the only weapons of self-defence belonging to a poor and disheartened people." He thought there ought to be inflexible resistance to a Bill which proposed to take from the Irish people, "under the name of crime, methods of action which, though not to be desired in a healthy state of society, may, when society is in an unhealthy state, be the only perfect remedies at the command of the people." In other words, Mr. Gladstone commends boycotting to Ireland as a counsel of imperfection. To withhold a coffin from a widow whose husband had in his lifetime worked for the emergency-men, is, then, in the present unhealthy state of Ireland, "the only perfect remedy at the command of the people." It breaks one's heart to read such a judgment as this from Mr. Gladstone. Dr. Parker and Mr. Guinness Rogers, however, appeared to be over- joyed with this new gloss on the equities of Irish politics. Is it to be generalised and preached in Nonconformist pulpits P
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